Just say you make bat soup. Don't try to make it sound fancy.

She's not an idiot. She represents idiots. She knows exactly what she's doing.

Her and Susan Collins with their "oopsie... I fell for it again" routine. I don't know who it's for at this point, but they're both still in office so I guess it's working.

There is so much of that kind of marketing at this point, that it had not occurred to me until reading this discussion that "Liquid Death" was intended to ironically over the top.

Even if there isn't a document with a big header that says "Client List" and firm documentation of what crimes were committed, we know there are flight logs, there are victim statements, and there are records of financial transactions.

That is absolutely enough to bring charges against at least some of these people. We are accepting a false narrative that there has to be some chiseled in stone singular document listing bad actors.

The problem with banning it all together is that there are hundreds of critical applications for which they're really is no alternative for PTFE, PCTFE and various derivative products.

Could we get by without Teflon pans, stain resistant fabric sprays, and consumer spray on dry lubricant... Sure. I'd really like them to take it out of food packaging. That would be nice.

But the world needs to interact with incredibly strong acids, and cryogenic temperatures and all sorts of other things for which human lives depend on having an absurdly inert material.

Medicine has improved by leaps and bounds. We have greater life expectancy and mostly a better quality of health along the way. Child mortality is down globally.

https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/child-mortality?time=1996..latest

Improvements in our understanding of neurodivergent students has resulted in better educational and quality of life outcomes for millions who in past decades would have fallen through the cracks.

The proliferation of environmental lead from paint and gasoline are WAY down, and the hole in the Ozone was just about peak in 1995.

Open source, public domain, and freely available knowledge have democratized education, technology, research, and product development in ways that would have almost been inconcievable in 1995.

We are able to communicate more globally, even with total strangers, often across language barriers, and for free.

Video games, films, and television are able to create visions that would have been technically impossible 30 years ago. And technology has reduced the barriers for people to gain entry into those industries.

I carry around a tiny super computer with instant access to all the world's knowledge. That would have been a dream in 1995.

There are of course many things that are worse. It's a harder time to be starting out in life. "Luxuries" are dirt cheap and necesities are unaffordable. We've traded our sense of community for a paranioa of "others" even as the world has gotten safer. Globally the world has been swinging toward extremism and it constantly feels like capitalism may collapse and we don't know what comes next if that happens. But failure to see how much is better and for how many seems like too much doom scrolling and too narrow and outlook.

Out of curiosity, I just checked my pantry. I have two 30 ounce jars (1400+ grams), sitting in reserve.

This genuinely represents a failure to comprehend the scale of American food products.

This was my first thought. This sounds like more of an issue for a shrink than Lemmy.

There are a few fundamental flaws I see with this argument.

As others have pointed out it's a false dichotomy.

There were hundreds of years of profitable content creation and distribution prior to invasive data collection or targeted advertisement. People were fine paying for every movie they saw and every periodical they read. The idea that it's financially untenable unless I tell Mark Zuckerberg my financial situation, medical conditions, and kinks is silly.

It's an uneven transaction. I read an article for one minute the platform gets to bombard me with ads for one minute... that's fair and equal. No notes. I read an article for one minute and Mark Zuckerberg gets to stalk me like a prey animal accross websites, circumventing protections against tracking, even if I don't have a FB account, then he can keep my data in perpetuity and sell it as many times as possible, to any party, anywhere in the world without my knowledge or explicit consent... that's less of a balanced transaction.

It's a coin toss as to who's more douchey. The person who thinks the output of their prompt is a reflection of their own creativity, or the cartoonishly pretentious "artist" who wants to lecture you about their blood, sweat, and tears.

What linux does and does not protect the user from is endlessly hilarious to me.

Hey linux, I want to install a file you downloaded.

Linux: Sounds risky man

I'd like my file explorer to have super user privleges.

Linux: Are you out of your god damned mind?

Hey linux, I want to delete the kernel that I'm actively using right now.

Linux: Hell yeah. I'll go to the looney bin with you.